Computing devices, such as laptops, desktops, netbooks, slates, smartphones, kiosks, and the like, have adopted several input interfaces. Increasingly popular are touch screen display interfaces (‘touch screens’). Different types of touch screens are implemented in several different environments, often depending on the size and type of interface desired. Some non-limiting examples of different types of touch screens include resistive touch screens, capacitive touch screens, infrared touch screens, and optical touch screens.
Many devices, such as those listed above, incorporate multi-touch touch screens. Multi-touch touch screens are able to simultaneously register multiple points of input, for example, three or more distinct positions of input touches.
Touch screen interfaces are popular for use in mobile devices. For example, in mobile devices having a touch screen, the touch screen is used to combine a display with an interface, such that a user's gestures on the combined display/interface, however sensed, are registered and sent to software, which then allows the device to respond to the input gestures.
No matter the particular technology utilized in a touch screen, or the device(s) that implement it, a user must interface with the touch screen to provide input. Common examples for accomplishing user input include use of a stylus (or pen) and use of one or more fingers. For example, when using a touch screen, a user employs one or more fingers to accomplish a task, for example, writing, scrolling, expanding the display (zooming in), compressing the display (zooming out), pointing, drawing, coloring, painting, et cetera.
Conventional displays allow users to position a pointing device (for example a mouse cursor), using for example an input device such as a mouse, to allow performance of certain operations (selection, highlighting, drawing, coloring, et cetera). However, touch screen devices conventionally provide no pointing device on the display, or provide a pointing device or like indicator directly underneath the point of contact with the touch screen. For example, a user drawing on a conventional touch screen display with a stylus provides input using the stylus, and the touch screen indicates input directly under the stylus point of contact (for example, draws a line directly underneath the tip of the stylus, mimicking conventional pen and ink writing).